Mammoths and Natural History

Believe it or not, this desert used to be a lake! For millions of years, this entire area was covered with marshes, ponds and lake water: our Ancient Lake Tecopa. Thanks to the high rainfall and cooler temperatures of the Ice Age, mega fauna like mastodons and mammoths – not to mention horses, camels and wolves! – roamed the grasslands and marshes.

Proboscidean (elephant) bones gathered in the sediments of Lake Tecopa long ago, lying undisturbed until Lake Tecopa finally breached and drained, about 100,000 years ago. Over the following millennia, the Amargosa River carved and sculpted the landscape you see today – and revealed treasures long buried.

Our Mammoth saga began in the fall of 1981 during a Sonoma State University geologic field trip. Taking a break from the rigors of field work, they made a serendipitous find: large bones in the Tecopa Lake beds, just south of the Dublin Hills here in Shoshone. The rest as they say, is history! In 2005 the bones were found to be much older than originally thought: about 650,000 years old!

Our collection contains bones from mammoths as well as a mastodon. We also have the footprints preserved in clay of camels, horses, and wolves that lived in the area long ago.